Mike Lambert: When will sports teams start caring about fans?

Mike Lambert

Saturday

Feb 28, 2009 at 12:01 AMFeb 28, 2009 at 8:50 PM

A professional sport is defined as a sport in which athletes receive payment for their performance. It seems it should be amended to include the line, “receiving large payments for any type of performance – good, bad or indifferent.”

A professional sport is defined as a sport in which athletes receive payment for their performance. It seems it should be amended to include the line, “receiving large payments for any type of performance – good, bad or indifferent.”

The people who pay the bills (the fans) have no say whatsoever as to what they like or dislike about their sport. Unless you consider that ultimately they don’t have to spend their hard-earned money on sports. If they choose to use their power, then things might change.

In the mix of all the baseball steroid talk, some have said that the fans were victims (victims of their favorite players performing at a much higher level). For me, as a fan, the only area that I’ve been victimized by the baseball steroid scandal is the wallet area. Salaries for players skyrocketed during the steroid period, and that sent the price of admission through the roof. So much for victim rights.

Football players also are paid lots of money, and many of them have no interest in the fans that pay their salaries. There was an autograph and sports memorabilia show in Chantilly, Va., in March that proves this statement. Several of the Pittsburgh Steelers were scheduled to appear and sign autographs for a fairly large fee. After they won the Super Bowl, some of them renegotiated their appearance contracts so their fans could pay them more for their signatures.

My question: Would they have lowered their fee if they had lost the Super Bowl?

There’s a movement to remove all fighting from the game of hockey. If you know hockey, then you know fighting and the threat of fighting are used to police the game. There isn’t a lot of fighting in hockey – the threat is usually good enough to keep the play fair. Besides, the fans love the toughness of hockey. But who cares what the fan wants?

I stopped watching basketball when it seemed to me that every player was a walking billboard for the local tattoo parlors. And NASCAR is a sport that seems to be crashing more and more every week. Overpriced drivers, overpriced tickets, hotel price-gouging and fan indifference – sounds like NASCAR has finally caught up with the other professional sports, doesn’t it?

With the economy as it is and ticket prices still climbing in most sports, the whole market will hopefully become a buyers market, and maybe then someone who owns a team will stop the bleeding by discontinuing the practice of overpaying players for performance and overcharging fans for the underperforming players.

Although it might be too late for some of us.

Sussex Countian columnist Mike Lambert can be reached at thelambertchronicles@comcast.net.

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